


and all the things that keep us here

by trell (qunlat)



Category: One Piece
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Eloping, Future Fic, Minor Nami/Nefertari Vivi, Minor Sanji/Usopp, Other, Reunions, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-10-01 19:34:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20381566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qunlat/pseuds/trell
Summary: In which there is an invitation, and Trafalgar Law gets a second chance.(Or: the one where they get married, in secret, at someone else's wedding, and make Usopp late to his.)





	and all the things that keep us here

**Author's Note:**

  * For [m_rosenkov](https://archiveofourown.org/users/m_rosenkov/gifts).

> _with wishes for clearer skies, and fewer ghosts._
> 
> (Content warnings in end note.)

Law gets the card in the mail.

It’s a small ornate thing, enough that he almost misses it in the stack of newspapers and letters the albatross drops in the crow’s nest. Only the fact of it slipping free as he’s shouldering his way back into his cabin makes him notice, cursive gold foil words catching the light as it lands face-up on the deck.

_You’re invited._

The back of the card contains rather more, and after reading it once Law sits on the edge of the bed and reads it over and over again until the words run together in front of his eyes. _To attend the wedding of,_ says the card, followed by two of the names of Strawhat’s crew; and it doesn’t even matter which two, only that he’s sitting here holding the only piece of correspondence he’s received from Strawhat in years.

He hadn’t expected to hear from Luffy again, the way he’d gone. The way he’d run, broken his promises and his heart, disappeared while Luffy was busy fetching his abducted crewmate, half cowardice and half certainty that in staying he’d hurt both of them worse.

But in his hand is a card inviting him to the wedding of Strawhat’s sniper and Strawhat’s cook, his name set down in careful print, and surely no one else would think to invite him. And sitting there, years since the last time he’s seen Luffy save for on the wanted posters crammed into the drawer next to his bed; years since he’s heard that voice; with the languishing pain that lingers deep in his chest blooming anew into the agonizing thing that it is when he isn’t looking—

Law can’t pretend that there’s anything he wants more than to see him again.

He goes. Goes senseless and scattered and knowing the whole time he’s a fool, clutching for the pendulous gold thread of a false possibility. 

Stupid. Impulsive.

Daring to hope.

It’s Luffy, after all, who acquainted him with the feeling.

*

Reaching the tiny island in the South Blue takes him three weeks, and even burning the auxiliary steam to the max he only narrowly avoids being late. Arrives with barely an hour to spare and takes the steps that wind up the hill overlooking the village two at a time, not pausing for the other latecomers trailing their way up.

It’s late in the day—the rays of the sun slanting long, the sky blazing orange off to his left—and Law is still, even at this final leg of his journey, uncertain as to what it is that he’s doing. Chasing his last best hope, or just going out of his way to put pressure on an old bruise, he doesn’t know; but his heart aches with the desire to see Luffy again, and even his fear fails to counteract that fatal pull.

Reservations churn endlessly in his head, all the same. Dozens of them together, ranging from matters as objectively inconsequential as the gray in his hair—what will Luffy think, seeing him now, barely into his thirties and already going silver from the stress? Old, repulsive, _changed,_ oh, god—to ones more in touch with reality, like how much anger Luffy still, surely, holds.

Law had broken all his promises, at Zou. Their alliance, their pact to take down Kaido, his obligation to repay some small part of his debt; at the base of it all his promise to be there, waiting, when Luffy came back. Had run and hidden and left all the things he hadn’t earned behind, and hadn’t crossed paths with Luffy again save for at the maritime battlefield surrounding Raftel, nothing so poetic as a glimpse through cannon fire.

(Law's fleet—his fleet that no one had expected, his fleet that turned the tide—had arrived at the pivotal moment, broken the enemy’s reinforcements before they could break the pirates’ flank. But he'd never seen Luffy, there at the island at the end of the world; had never come closer than a hundred ships across the boiling waves, even fighting in his name.)

What he’ll find at the top of the hill after that—after breaking the two of them apart, after serving Strawhat still—Law can’t begin to guess. Certainly he doesn’t expect to be forgiven, his former actions erased by the latter. Doesn't expect any welcome at all, but for the fact of the invitation tucked in his right pocket.

He’d given up on excuses a week into being eastward-bound. All that remains to him now is a settled-in sort of panic, bubbling softly behind his breastbone: biding its time and shouting, over and over, turn around, turn around, _turn around._

He reaches, at last, the top of the steps.

Sitting at the crest of the hill is an abbey, a tiny gothic affair with splendid glass windows and a walled garden surrounding the back. A sparse wood rolls down the side of the hill that faces the sea, and here the ocean smell buffets up through the trees, stirs the lanterns lining the path to the church. Colorful streamers trail from each, lifted by the occasional salt-laden gust.

Law had passed half a dozen of the tidefaith’s shrines in the village below, clean and busy and plainly the people's usual places of worship. This place is nothing like that; lingering about the building is the air of a historical relic, the tended holy place of a fading Red Line splinter faith. On a normal day, he imagines it might be serene, a breath of peace above the village bustle.

In the moment—filled to the rafters with pirates, scoundrels spilling out the tall doors onto the tamped-down lawn, all of them laughing, talking, most already drinking—the word that first comes to mind is _festive._

Law slows to a walk as he approaches, as much to take stock of the crowd as to catch his breath after the climb. A cursory look is sufficient to make him grateful he'd dug out his most nondescript suit for the occasion, eschewing his usual captain’s colors; countless familiar faces mill about on the lawn, all belonging to people he'd rather avoid.

There’s no sign of Luffy among them—he'd know at once if there were, with the way the lines of any party redraw themselves to make Luffy the center—so he heads instead for the abbey, shoulders hunched low and his hands in his pockets. Reputation serves him better than anonymity, most days, when it comes to driving people away; tonight, though, he wants nothing so much as to pass unremarked, unreported. If Luffy doesn’t find out that he’s here then he still has a way out, can still choose to turn back before he makes his latest ghastly mistake.

That’s what he tells himself, anyway.

At a podium just outside the door he meets Strawhat’s navigator, glowering down at a clipboard clasped in her mechanical hand. Her fiery red hair is cropped arrestingly short, and she has the appearance of one exasperatedly in charge, like a particularly put-upon ringmaster. _She_ recognizes him at once, glancing up as he approaches: “You! Damn. I’m out fifty beri.”

Whatever he might have said falls out of Law’s head at this frank greeting. “Ah,” is all he comes up with, and curls his fingers compulsively around the crumpled card in his pocket.

Nami, ever straight to the chase, takes this in stride. Points over her shoulder with her pen, and says, “Luffy’s inside, by the altar. He’s officiating, of course, but the ceremony doesn’t start for an hour.” The look she gives him is sharply appraising, and Law nearly winces, faced with it. The Strawhats, everyone knows, have a long memory. “I’m sure,” says Nami curtly, “he’ll be very interested to know that you’re here.”

Which Law interprets clearly as, _Here’s your shovel; start digging—_but he says only, “Right,” and escapes inward into the abbey. Nami’s shrewd gaze bores between the blades of his shoulders until he passes out of her sight, edged with distrustful reproach.

He deserves that. He does.

It fails to stop his feet from carrying him further inside.

A long central hallway runs down the length of the church, and he follows it until he reaches the nave, pauses outside it. Knots of people loiter within, a few stragglers wandering amid the yet-unfilled isles, and a larger group is gathered at the edge of the pulpit. And there—

—there, dressed in a vague stab at formality, black tie awkwardly loose on his form, the trademark hat at his back spoiling the ensemble completely: stands Luffy, his back to the door. He’s chatting with a regal brown woman whose extraordinary blue hair cascades down to her ankles, every inch of him restless idle, and Law doesn’t need to see his face to know the precise shape of his grin.

Something the woman says makes Luffy laugh, and the sound—bouncing off the vaulted stone ceiling, clear as a bell—hooks in Law’s chest, pierces him like a fish on a barb. Strings him up just the same, dangling helpless agony.

It’s suddenly all too much, and he sags without meaning to against the doorway, years of longing, years of tangled memory, coming back to him in a rush. He’s missed Luffy’s presence every day, every hour, for long enough that the pain of it has long since blended into his normal existence; had thought he knew that regret inside and out, only to find, now—with his heart’s desire forty feet away, just on the other side of a room—that he’d been wrong, all-new avenues of anguish opening in his heart.

Too many times his first sight of Luffy after a long time apart has been in the middle of combat, a glimpse through a haze of gunpowder and blood and vicious motion. He wonders, stupidly, whether the presence of those things would help now; whether it might put a captain’s steel in his spine, or ward him in some small way against the tide of want that overtakes him.

He wants, ardently, to cross the space towards Luffy. To say his name—to say _I’m back—_to throw himself upon Luffy’s mercy, and let the pieces fall.

He doesn’t. Stays frozen, instead, and he might have stood there in the doorway until the ceremony started, until it concluded, until he found his legs and willpower enough to turn away, only.

Luffy glances over his shoulder, and sees him.

Recognition flares in his eyes, in his face, in his whole lanky person. Luffy's mouth opens, and closes; Law, shocked suddenly back into motion, jolts back from the door.

Luffy turns back to the blue woman (the princess-regent of Alabasta, Law’s flagging brain places her at last, useless in full) and says something, fast and sharp. Then he vaults easily over the nearest pew, and starts making his way down the central aisle, determined.

The panic that had been fizzing dormant in Law’s chest ignites like hydrogen gas. His lungs fill with it, suffocating, but he doesn’t bolt; just turns and walks back the way he’d come, unthinking, pure mechanical motion.

He doesn’t make it very far.

*

Luffy catches up to him half-way to the door. “Torao!”

Law’s heart clenches treacherously at that—how long since he’d last heard that name, spoken in that voice?—and he almost falters, almost stops. But no: he shouldn’t have come here, shouldn’t have—

Luffy grabs his hand. “_Torao_.”

His heart comes to a battered stop in his chest.

He turns, slowly. Huge dark eyes meet his, and Law’s gaze falls: traces helplessly over the familiar hatchmark scar, the smattering of lighter freckles bright across the nose, the nearly-pouting frown. The coarse dark hair in a state of perpetual disarray, longer than he remembers—a memory of burying his face against it flares unbidden in his mind, shockingly visceral, some fragmented instant from that disastrous drunken night on Zou—the careless ease of posture, like the body from which it flows has never known worry or fear.

Law had thought his heart stopped at the touch. Now he knows it to be so, forgets even how to breathe, much less think or speak.

Five years apart is not so long a time, surely, for mere proximity with his heart’s desire to rob him of all faculty. And yet: faced with Luffy, close and live and bright-eyed mad: he can hardly claim to be anything but fallen. _Falling_, the ground rushing up at speed.

“Where are you going,” Strawhat says. He’s angry, furious, the straight-forward unmitigated kind he gets in the face of some unrighted wrong, some great or small injustice.

(Law remembers his first encounter with that fury, on a crowded auction house floor at Sabaody. Can close his eyes and see with perfect recollection the moment things had gone the way of explosive action, Luffy’s fist pulled back with coiled tension, his own intake of breath, the moment when he’d known, _known_ that Luffy was going to do it—)

And Luffy is _livid_, thrumming with the tension of it, face darkly aglow, his brows drawn. Law, pinned by that blazing look, has never seen anything more perfect in his life.

He realizes with horror that he’s grinning, ruinously out of place, and tries to school his features to something less inappropriate. He’s not at all sure he succeeds. “Nowhere,” he breathes, and doesn’t dare blink, “I wasn’t . . . going anywhere.”

“You were leaving.” Luffy’s tone is flat with accusation. “Like you left then. While I was gone.” His hand tightens in Law’s own, vise-like, as though Law might still bolt. “You said we’d do it all together, and then you weren’t there.”

The pain in Luffy’s eyes drains the manic delight from him in an instant, leaves him with a clammy cold knot in his gut. “I—”

And how can he explain the magnitude of the fear that had driven him, then? That the howl of the annihilated empty space inside him had grown to deafening, after Dressrosa, left him no more than walking dead; that he’d woken up the night after the bonfire on Zou utterly certain that if he stayed it would swallow them both, instead of him alone. How desperately he’d wanted to stay . . .

“I’m sorry,” is all that makes it out of his throat. It’s sorely inadequate for what he means.

“You _lied_, Torao.” Luffy is staring at him, holding his gaze, and Law can’t look away, can’t run, can’t hide, not anymore; and there is so far to fall, in those dark eyes, far enough for him to dash his life out in the plummet. “I thought you would come back.”

The words tear out of Law all at once, so jumbled he can hardly make sense of himself. “I wanted to. I wanted so badly, every day, every time your name was in the paper, but I”—_had just learned what wanting was, and no one ever warned me that I would want so much—_“I couldn’t stay, not like I was. I didn’t think you—I thought—I never thought I could come back, but you, you sent me this,” he pulls out the crumpled invitation, twists it helplessly in his hands, “and I—I’m back.”

He stops on this simple brainless statement of fact, biting down the rest of his stupid babble. Holds fast to all that threatens to escape if he speaks again, every excuse and apology and the repulsive litany of _wanted, wanted, wanted_.

That, above all, Luffy does not need to know.

_(And if desire is a sin,_ asks some wretched dark part of him, looking down on this pathetic display, _shouldn’t its fulfillment be a virtue, being as it is a means to make it stop?)_

Luffy’s eyes have grown wide over the course of this deluge, anger swept away in a rising tide of consternation that doesn’t ebb even as Law staggers to his finish. Possibilities as to what Luffy's going to say swarm like locusts in his head, each worse than the last, all of them fair, and—also like locusts—devouring his every last thought.

Luffy blinks, and says: “But I didn’t send an invitation.”

The universe grinds to a stop with violent deceleration. Someone says, “What?” Logic, arriving on a time-lag delay, appraises Law that it must have been him.

“I didn’t send it,” Luffy repeats, and Law’s useless reflexes kick finally into gear, try to jerk his hand free, unsuccessful. “But that doesn’t mean,” Luffy continues forcefully, “that I don’t want you here. Stop running away!”

Law stops. Self-preservation, the well-honed monolith of his psyche, screams _no!_ and the tangled part that only wants and wants and _wants_ wails, _yes!_ Law, feeling as though he’s trying to split by mitosis into two separate people, thinks for a moment of nothing at all.

Luffy hauls him back to thinking reality by grabbing his other hand and pulling him closer, enough that Law feels the heat of him, the proximity riveting. Finds himself looking into a face gone intense, intent, possessed suddenly by a terrifying expression of _purpose_, and that’s another look he knows well: the one where Luffy has made a decision, and woe be it for anyone—be they god or mortal or innate aspect of physics—foolish enough to stand in his way.

“I don’t want you to leave,” Luffy says. Loudly, slowly, like he thinks Law won’t get it unless he uses very small words. “I want you to _stay_. I’m so angry with you, don’t you get it, _I missed you._”

The building roar in Law’s head goes utterly silent. Like the cessation of wind in the mountains, the absence of sound deafening in the wake of continuous susurration: an anti-bang, quiet imposed with such density that no noise would dare break it.

He stares at Luffy. Luffy stares back, that terrifying expression still on his face. “Torao,” he says, in the same measured tone, the one that means _Law is an idiot and needs this explained to him very carefully_. “This would be a _really_ good time to kiss me.”

It takes Law the length of a heartbeat to process the words. Then he moves: seizes Luffy’s face with both hands—_now_ Luffy lets go—and kisses him, soundly, desperately, every ounce of five years’ suppressed desire come to the forefront at once.

It is, he is certain, the most effortless thing he has ever done. A total economy of motion: negative free energy change, spontaneous cascade towards equilibrium, the second law of thermodynamics. Easy as falling. _All you have to do is let go._

(And the mouth that meets his is eager and warm and nothing like Law remembers—

_he fists his left hand in Luffy’s shirt and jerks him down, no warning, no question, nothing now but blood in his mouth and smoke in his lungs and the distant clash of the battle waging below—nothing but that he is dying, cold white hands reaching out of his past to take him with them at last, and he’s damned if he’s going down without taking this even once, damned if he’s letting go without telling Strawhat in the only way left to him that it’s his fault, all his fault he’s still got something left to lose_

—and he is falling, falling as he was falling then, falling as he has been falling since; towards his inevitable center of gravity, towards this ridiculous, careless, impossible man who’s become the king of the pirates, towards the source of the debt that he can never repay.)

And Luffy—

Luffy kisses him back.

When they finally break apart—Law stunned, Luffy no less determined but a great deal more kissed—it’s all he can do to gasp, “That was . . .”

“Good?" says Luffy, a little belligerently.

Law has to strangle a laugh. “A long time coming,” he says instead, and has to take a moment while reality realigns itself in his head. He wants to ask, _What does this mean?_ or _Does this mean that you forgive me,_ but every train of thought keeps drifting out of reach, lifted together with the weight in his chest.

“I’m still angry with you,” Luffy informs him, and he looks it: hands clenched at his sides, still vibrating with that same intensity.

But that giddy delight is rising in Law again, unrestrained, and he can’t find the will to drag it kicking and screaming back down. “I’m here,” he says again, in a tone altogether different from before. “I’m not running away.”

“How do I know,” Luffy says, and Law had forgotten what it was like, being the sole focus of Luffy’s attention, all that ambient force suddenly directed at _him_. As an experience it bears something in common with that of an ant caught on the wrong side of a magnifying glass from the sun. “Prove it.”

“I—” and just now Law would step over the edge of precipice, if Luffy asked; would get on his knees, would beg for forgiveness, would sell his soul and his ship and all his worldly possessions, anything, everything, just for the chance to kiss him again. “How?”

None of that prepares him for what Luffy says next. Luffy says it with the same world-shaking determination he’s applied to toppling empires: with the kind of ironclad certainty possessed by practicing fundamentalists, and an ease that surely doesn’t befit the phrase.

It’s so unbelievable that Law has to ask him to say it again.

Twice, because he still can’t believe it after the second.

The third time Luffy says it Law finally manages to inhale. “You want me to—you really want that?”

“That’s what I said,” Luffy says, wide-eyed and fierce, not backing down. “Marry me, Torao. That’s how. Prove you’re not gonna run.”

Myriad responses swirl in Law's brain. Front-runner candidates feature profound disbelief, and phrases like _you must be out of your mind._

What actually comes out of his mouth is: “Who would make the pronouncement? You can’t officiate your own wedding.”

For a moment Luffy looks thoughtful, frowning; but a beat later his face lights with an idea. “I don’t have to. C’mon, follow me!”

Law has known how to do nothing else in a very long time, but he doesn’t say that; doesn’t trust his tongue with anything else at all, just does, surely as by compulsion.

Luffy leads the way down the hall.

*

Down the hall and through a door leading into the back of the chapel, where an austere stone chamber connects a series of plush dressing rooms. In a properly civilized world, the kind Law has dedicated his life to shattering into pieces, the rooms would doubtless be reserved for the bride; as it is, the whole place smells stiflingly of cigarettes, and under the watchful gaze of Our Lady of Perpetual Help rests an ash tray overflowing with butts.

The man responsible for the tobacco miasma isn’t in evidence, though judging by the thin tendril of smoke trailing up from the tray he hasn’t been away very long. Law, being drawn along by the hand—unable to recall how this came to pass, feeling as though he’s floating, his feet surely never touching the ground—doesn’t have the presence of mind to wonder where the smoker has gone, nor even where Luffy is headed.

Which is how he finds himself standing in the doorway of a dressing room occupied by two arguing grooms, watching dumbly as Luffy marches inside.

It’s not clear what the argument is about. Strawhat’s cook is gesturing vigorously with his cigarette, and the longnose sniper has his hands clutched in his own hair, untied and floating around his head in a wild dark halo. It’s plain that they’re both working their way up to some crowning moment of supreme frustration, only—they never get there, because Luffy walks up to them both, and shouts, “Usopp! I need your help.”

Two sets of soon-to-be-married eyes turn to Luffy, startled abruptly into dead silence. Law, still in the doorway, tries to blend in with the wall.

Usopp says, “Luffy, what the _hell?”_

“We’re a little busy,” grinds out Blackleg, his irritation with his husband-to-be apparently put on hold to join forces in being annoyed with his captain. “Can’t this wait? I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the ceremony’s in thirty minutes.”

“Which is why I gotta get Usopp now,” insists Luffy, undeterred, “’cause once it starts we’re all gonna be up there for _ages._ I know, Nami went over it a million times.”

“Luffy,” Usopp says plaintively, “I’m about to get _married._ Like, for real married, in front of everybody, to _this guy, forever,”_ an expansive handwave encompasses Blackleg’s scowling visage, and nearly knocks his cigarette out of his mouth, “_what_ can be so important?”

Law would very much like to know the answer himself, but Luffy ignores the question. “It’ll be quick, promise! Just need you ’n Robin. Ten minutes.”

Usopp clearly means to argue the point further, but Blackleg whirls and stalks away, taking his cloud of smoke with him. “Ugh, you know he won’t let up if you don’t do it, just go! We can finish this after.”

“Yeah,” says Luffy brightly, “you’ll have plenty of time left to argue,” and hauls Usopp towards the door by the arm.

With Law still in the doorway he’s also perforce hauling Usopp towards _him,_ and it’s not until they’re half-way across the room that the sniper notices that he’s there. “Is that who I think it is?” Usopp says, stopping short—or trying to, anyway, because Luffy just keeps dragging him on. “What’s he doing here?”

Law says, faintly, “I was invited,” though he’s pretty sure he wasn’t invited back _here,_ and, come to think of it, he still doesn’t know who it was that sent him that invitation. Then, because it seems to be required, he adds, “Congratulations.”

“Thanks,” says Usopp, flatly, and, looking to Luffy, “you said we need Robin, too, right? For whatever’s so urgent that it can’t wait until _after I’m married?”_ Luffy gives a vigorous nod, and Usopp shakes his head in exasperation, his hair bouncing against his shoulders. “She’s in the garden, I think.”

“Great!” Luffy says, and leads his tiny war party on.

*

They’ve almost reached the exit into the garden when Luffy tells Usopp, “I need you to marry me.”

Usopp stares at him. “Luffy, I’m marrying Sanji. In thirty minutes? With you officiating? Ring any bells?”

“Not _to_ you,” clarifies Luffy, “to Torao.”

Usopp actually stops in his tracks at that, right there in the narrow passage leading out back of the chapel. “No way. Seriously?” He looks awkwardly back towards Law, like he’s trying not to get caught looking. “You want to marry _him?”_

Law would be offended at the incredulity in Usopp’s voice if he didn’t think much the same himself. As it is, it’s Luffy—always Luffy—that comes to his defense, in his usual simple way: “’Course I do. Right now.” _Before he gets away again,_ hangs unspoken.

“Um,” Usopp says, and then, apparently thinking better of trying to dissuade Luffy solely on the basis of Law’s obvious demerits, “and you think I can do that why, again?”

“’Cause,” Luffy says, evenly, “You’re the only other captain around. Remember, Captain Usopp?”

Which works the necessary magic with such speed that Law’s head spins, and he’s forced once again to reevaluate Luffy’s ability in the area of persuasion. Usopp straightens—draws himself haughtily up—clears his throat, and says, “_Right._ Of course Captain Usopp is available to officiate.” And then, only a little deflated, “But, um, quickly, because we really do need to get back. Nami’s gonna blow a gasket if both you _and_ me go missing at the start of the ceremony.”

“Right,” agrees Luffy, and resumes the march outside, double-time.

The garden backing the chapel proves to be a dense grove of green, vine-laden lattices filling the gaps in the wall that look out over the village below. A gazebo stands at the center, and bushes and citrus trees line the sides of the space.

Flowers of every shape and form fill the rest, their arrangement too pleasing for nature yet organic enough to defy the appearance of pattern. With the sun sunken low in the sky an array of evening flowers raise their heads over the closed daytime blossoms, the air redolent with their waking exhale.

Usopp sneezes, and the familiar shape of a woman rises in surprise from where she’d been hidden behind the bushes by the gazebo. “Usopp, Luffy! Is it time?” And then, her eyebrows climbing as she spots Law at Luffy’s shoulder: “And you’ve brought a friend, I see. Hello, Torao.”

“Nico,” greets Law, while Usopp explains that no, not yet, the ceremony’s in twenty minutes, but Luffy here has an Idea, capital ‘i’. Law, meanwhile, feels dimly grateful to be categorized by at least one encounter today as _friend_, for all that he knows it isn’t something he’s earned.

Nico Robin herself looks much as he remembers, dark and slender-tall, with striking sharp features and a comportment that makes her seem far older than her thirty-odd years. Yet something about her deviates from the Nico Robin in the clash of memories he retains from Dressrosa and Punk Hazard; makes her look far less harrowed, like a weight has been lifted, or some few of her sharp edges have been filed down.

Law remembers catching sight of that same filed-down quality in himself in the mirror, a year ago, some subtle shift in his bearing that had made his presence tick over from _haggard_ to _tired,_ and lifted some of the strung-out look from his eyes. Seeing the same thing in Robin rouses in him a strange spike of sympathy, and he hopes it means that good things have happened to her.

Or maybe what he thinks of as filed-down edges is just the enormous white sun hat and gardening gloves that she’s wearing over her casual blouse and rolled jeans, the spade in her hands rendering her _weekend gardener_ instead of _world’s foremost expert on poneglyph archeology._ Fuck if he knows.

Luffy bounds ahead down the stone path that leads to the gazebo. “Robin, I need you to be my witness! So’s I can marry Torao. Usopp’s gonna officiate, but Nami says ’s’not real unless someone’s around to see, so.”

“Marry Torao?” Robin says—surprised, and then, as they approach, almost conspiratorial. Law trails a few feet behind Luffy, and Usopp close after him. “This is new. I thought,” she gives Law a raised-eyebrows look, “Torao had been gone for some time.”

Law—decides not to touch that one, just now. Usopp sniffs, “’S what I said.”

Luffy, coming to a stop before Robin, just nods intently. “Yeah! So, I gotta marry him before he runs away again.” One over-long arm snakes suddenly out behind him, loops around Law’s elbow to reel him in.

“I trust Torao is on board with this plan,” Robin says, as Law stumbles to Luffy’s side, “and that I’m not abetting in a forced marriage?” This time the look Law gets falls somewhere between speculative and amused.

“I’m on board,” he confirms, a little weakly. And then, addressing Luffy, because after all this is _his_ mad impromptu idea: “How do we go about this?”

“We just have to exchange something,” Luffy says, “right? And then say ‘yes’ when the captain asks us if we both want to get married.”

“Those do tend to be the base characteristics,” Robin agrees—definitely amused, now, the edges of her mouth quirking up.

Usopp considers this reductive take with a frown. “I _guess,_ but what’re you gonna exchange? Me ’n Sanji are doing those corded bracelets, ’cause that’s how they do it back in Syrup Village—you weave a cord before the marriage, and at the ceremony you’re tied together and the officiant cuts you apart, so you end up wearing your half for good.” He encircles his wrist with his fingers, miming the bracelet that isn’t yet there. “How’d people get married on Goa?”

Luffy scrunches his nose. “I ’unno. All Dadan ever said was that they wouldn’t let her smoke during the ceremony.” And, thoughtful addition, “Also, that she wished she’d broken the guy’s nose _during_ the talking, instead of after.”

Usopp makes a choked noise at this candid retrospective, but Luffy ignores him, turning instead to Law. Peers up at him, earnest, and asks, “What did they do on your island?”

“I—don’t know,” Law admits, and feels a strange pang in his chest at the loss.

He’d been ten, when his city fell. The horror that followed had swallowed far more of those years than he’s managed to keep, and in the shattered fragments of his recollection—in those few pieces he’s picked over so many times that he doesn’t know whether they’re still really his memories, or just stories he told to himself when they were—there’s no answer to a question like that. How the people of Flevance celebrated their love, what gifts they gave, what promises they spoke; none of that remains in the world, not anywhere, and certainly not in him.

Neither of them, it seems, has the luxury of tradition.

But then, history has no place among pirates, just as it holds no place in it for them.

Robin’s voice is soft, breaking the brooding silence that settles. “On this island, I’m told, the participants exchange flowers.”

Luffy brightens at once. “We can do that! Right, Torao?”

Law swallows. Says, “Right,” and feels the pulled-tight sensation release from around his heart, the twist of sorrow recede. “We can do that.”

He watches as Luffy bounces away towards the surrounding bushes, and then—shaking the moment’s melancholy—does the same himself, dazed and not knowing which flower to choose. His hand closes around the one that’s nearest, in the end: a dozen tiny white blossoms sprouting from a single stem into a bushel of bloom, rising out of the leaves some feet away.

White has never been his color, but—maybe it’s time he gave it new meaning.

He breaks the flower off at the stem, and walks back to where Usopp and Robin are waiting. Luffy returns from his own floral foray with an enormous red hibiscus the size of his hand, and Robin, inspecting their choices from where she stands by the gazebo, gives a faint smile.

Law wonders why, and decides rapidly that he’d just as soon remain in the dark. Asks instead, “What do we do with them?” feeling foolish, standing there with the broken-off thing in his hand.

“Most often they’re pinned to the other’s clothing,” Robin suggests, “or tucked in the hair.”

Law blinks down at Luffy. The notion of anything staying for long in Luffy’s hair or lapel pocket is laughable, but—

“Give me your hat,” he tells Luffy, and feels a stupid rush of warmth at how readily Luffy does, passing him Gold Roger’s tattered relic without hesitation.

Carefully, not daring to think too hard about what he’s holding, Law presses the stem of the flower into the band of the hat. With the stalk so fresh the band holds it fast, and there’s no chance of it falling back out on its own.

He hands the hat silently back to Luffy, who smiles, and places it back on his head before looking Law over in turn. When he hesitates—suffering his own moment of puzzlement, for Law’s jacket lacks so much as outer pockets—it’s Robin, again, that comes to the rescue: produces a pin from inside her jacket, and hands it to Luffy without a word.

Luffy pins his hibiscus to Law’s lapel, and turns expectantly now to Usopp, as though to say, _you’re on._

Usopp clears his throat again, awkward. There’s something odd in his face as he looks at them, like he’s having a hard time reconciling his captain and the situation they’re in. “Um—all right. Luffy, do you—er—take him,” a nervous gesture indicates Law, “as your husband, ’til the sea does swallow you both?”

“Yeah,” Luffy says, not sparing Usopp so much as a glance, his eyes only for Law. “I do.”

Law’s breath catches. Usopp, oblivious, fumbles on: “And, er, Torao. Do you take Luffy as yours, until no tide remains.”

Luffy is still watching him. His reply punches out of him, irrefutable: “I do.” And, still caught by Luffy’s gaze, unwilling to look away for worlds, “Of course I do.”

“Er,” Usopp says. “Well, then. In that case. By my authority as a captain of the seas,” and his voice loses the uncertain waver, then, his repetition clean, “I pronounce you wed before the tides, and all those who stride upon them and between.”

A moment at which no one moves, and no one speaks, and then—“I believe,” Robin says gently, “this is usually the part where there’s a kiss.”

Luffy takes him by the lapels and pulls him, carefully, down.

It is, Law has time to realize, the first time that Luffy has ever kissed him first.

He’s glad for it, and glad too for the chastity of the kiss, a mere press of lips; for he is certain, from the heat inside him, that if he’d been the one leaning in—if Luffy’s kiss had been any deeper—he wouldn’t have been able to stop at just one.

Luffy draws back, his face lighting with a satisfied grin, and Law straightens; says, “Was that real?” uncertain of whom he’s asking. Luffy, with hands still curled around the lapels of his jacket? Robin, as the only sane one among them? “Are we really—?”

“Of course we are,” Luffy says, in the same moment that Usopp huffs, “Are you questioning the authority of the great Captain Usopp?”

Robin, rather more demure, offers, “You exchanged vows, and were pronounced joined by a figure with social authority. The only other thing one might do is write the information down, but—we’re pirates. The tenets that hold us together have never been the sort put to paper.”

That much Law knows to be true: nothing that counts about them is committed to writing, to any memory save the organic. All of them exist only in the moment, in the people their lives touch; it’s only right, then, that his bond with Luffy be codified in the same way.

Through living it. Through bearing witness.

“There was a philosopher, once,” Robin adds, musing, “who posited that marriage was not a social contract, but a state of mind.” She purses her lips. “Admittedly, he’d just been caught cheating on his wife, but—it seems to me that the concept is no less sound for his motivations.” And then, her black sense of humor sneaking through, “If you really wanted to test the matter, I suppose you could travel to the siren straits, where the gorgon rule, and see whether you can hear the sirens' song. Of course, it’s just as possible that the gorgon spread the story about married men being unable to hear to lure more of them in . . .”

“I think we’ll pass,” says Law, dizzily, and looks back to Luffy—

—who is reaching up towards him, a strange expression on his face. Fingers brush against Law’s temple, and there’s a wonder in Luffy’s voice when he says, “You turned gray, Torao.”

Which renders Law astonishingly self-conscious, but he never manages to respond: for something in Luffy’s words—the reminder of time's inevitable forward march, perhaps—makes Usopp cry, “Oh, shit!” and slap his forehead, eyes huge. “Luffy, we need to get _back!”_

Law could laugh at the comical way Luffy’s own eyes round in response: he spins to face Usopp, and the two of them stare at each other before bolting in unison for the door, practically shoving each other out of the way. “Shit, Usopp, sorry, I was supposed to get you back in time to argue some more with Sanji—”

“—never mind that, Nami’s gonna _kill_ me for being late to my own wedding, you know she’s spent the past month making sure this whole thing comes together, all ’cause I asked—”

And Luffy again, turning to throw Law one last look and wave an outstretched arm over his head as they disappear into the chapel: “After, Torao!”

Leaving Law suddenly alone in the garden with Robin, and the quiet settling back into place.

He looks to her, feeling as though something’s caught between the cogs of his brain, trying to parse the past whirlwind hour, and it hits him, then. He says, a trifle awkwardly, half-grinning with the shapeless joy unfolding inside him: “I don’t suppose you might know, in your greater wisdom, how this,” he takes the crumpled invitation out of his pocket, flashes it for her to see, “came to find me in the New World, when no one will admit to having sent it?”

Robin touches her fingers to her lips, and smiles her inscrutable smile, Witch of Ohara in full. “I confess, I had hoped the captain might resolve what transpired between the two of you, had you but another chance to meet. I did _not,_ however, imagine that I was facilitating an elopement.”

“But you bet on me,” Law says, thinking of Nami’s words at the door. “You thought I would come back.”

The look she gives him then conveys her answer plain, thoroughly unimpressed—have you met yourself, didn’t you come running back at the first sign that he might want you, didn’t you just get married at his whim. But her expression softens, and she says, “He missed you very much. I chose to believe in his chance at happiness, as he once chose to believe in mine.”

Law’s mouth goes dry. “Oh,” he says.

And then, remembering himself, remembering, for once, to give the least of he owes, “Thank you.” Meaning: thank you for the invitation. Thank you for guiding our bumbling union. Thank you for trusting Luffy’s judgement, even when it comes to somebody like me.

Robin inclines her head, acknowledging, her face hidden for a moment by her wide-brimmed hat. When she looks up again her eyes are light, and she steps around him, setting her spade on the gazebo fence. “We ought to go—they’ll be starting any minute, now.”

Law follows her inside.

*

In the end all of them are fully twenty minutes late, Nami’s organizer’s furor ringing down the hallways from where she catches her stray officiant and groom. (Law and Robin, at least, are fortunate enough to duck unnoticed into the nave; Law doesn’t imagine Robin has much to fear from the navigator, but for his part he’d rather not draw any more Strawhat ire.) Usopp is hustled up to the altar to join his deeply harried-looking husband-to-be, and Luffy up after him, and eventually—when everyone is, at last, more or less in their place—the ceremony begins.

The princess-regent of Alabasta makes the opening remarks, her delivery diplomat-smooth. So genuine and composed is Nefertari Vivi that the chaos of the preceding minutes seems to fade, and the two grooms at the altar no longer look quite so frazzled; the world scurries back into order under the princess-regent’s benevolent regard, and everyone, from the to-be-wed down, remembers once again to breathe in.

(Law, squeezed next to Robin in the very back row, spots Nami watching the princess from where she’s hovering at the edge of the room, and wonders at the look on her face; and then, in a flash of recognition, doesn't, for the way she looks at the princess is surely the way he looks at Luffy on the field of battle, pride and awe and something else more than either of those things.)

When the princess has finished speaking the grooms give their vows—the proper kind, this time, not just officiant’s charges, each promise given thought and written with ample time. Usopp, to Law’s surprise, makes it through his without a stumble, while Blackleg fumbles twice and reads out the rest like he's issuing a challenge.

Then they tie their woven band around each other’s wrists, and Luffy speaks their charges—a little more loose than the official version, but no less honest for it—and cuts the cord between them, and: that’s the thing done, his two crewmen married, promised to each other for good.

Blackleg drags Usopp in for a kiss.

A pirate crowd is a pirate crowd is a pirate crowd, no matter the occasion; wild cheers erupt from the pews, punctuated by piercing whistles and whoops. The Strawhat cyborg heaves enormous sobs into a handkerchief many sizes too small, accompanied at volume by the little nonhuman doctor; confetti poppers are popped, and champagne bottles wrested open, and Robin, sitting still beside Law, presses a hand to her mouth to cover her smile.

All of that fades to gray when Luffy catches his gaze over the heads of the crowd and smiles, hand going up to touch the flower in his hat like a jaunty salute. Law, breathless, touches his hand to the hibiscus at his breast, and doesn’t look away until somebody shoves past him on their way out from the pew.

He blinks back into awareness to Robin watching him with a knowing spark in her eye, and can’t find it in himself to feel embarrassed. The secret of his and Luffy’s own hurried promise warms him all the way through, drives out his irrelevant concerns: and he thinks, as he stands, of what Robin had said, about believing in Luffy’s happiness.

About believing in his own, so long impossible to imagine, suddenly within reach.

He doesn’t walk so much as drift along with the crowd’s current into the hallway, drunk on the memory of Luffy’s smile.

*

After the ceremony everyone is invited to dine on the front lawn—_put out to pasture,_ Law thinks—and Luffy comes to find him again, a bobbing white flower approaching him through the crowd. “Torao.”

His face is bright with the ceremony’s shared joy, and Law can’t help but smile back. “Does this make you even with the longnose?”

Luffy shrugs, amicably, and nods towards the narrow path that leads through a closed wooden gate and around the edge of the chapel, towards the unpeopled garden where they’d spoken their own promise barely an hour before. “Come with me? I think we gotta talk, now that there’s time.”

Cold dread coils anew in Law’s stomach, banishing the pleasant warmth that’s settled into him with his first glass of champagne. “All right,” he says, and opens his hand palm-up towards Luffy, _lead the way._ Luffy heads for the gate, ducking around groups of chattering guests, sure in the knowledge that Law will follow.

Law, for his part, captures another flute of champagne on the way and downs it all without looking. It makes him feel like a coward, but—he’d rather weak liquid courage than none at all, faced with this conversation.

His hand drifts again to the flower fastened at his lapel. He’s spent five years avoiding this moment. He can’t possibly keep avoiding it now.

The back garden is empty, when they reach it, fireflies drifting over the bushes, flickering green. Luffy leads him to a secluded bench by the cool stone of the chapel, and Law doesn’t quite fall down onto it, Luffy settling at his side.

For a brief while neither of them speak. Law looks out at the garden—at the sky, fading into deep shades of purple—anywhere but Luffy, seated beside him and casually swinging his legs. The pressure of the silence builds around them, gathering into a storm.

Eventually—when Law’s tension has wound so tight that he feels ready to break, and nearly blurts his own question, his own prompt for Luffy to start—Luffy says: “Tell me why you left.”

The bottom drops out of Law’s stomach. He’d known that would be it, avoided for hours this very subject, but it still jolts down his spine like a thing unexpected, like a knife applied to some vital organ. “Ah,” he says, and tries to formulate an answer, wishing his heart weren’t suddenly hammering in his chest.

He doesn’t expect the way Luffy’s hand finds his own on the bench when he doesn’t answer, nor the calm way Luffy knits their fingers together. “I’m not angry anymore, Torao. I just want to know.”

Having the very source of his fear offer him reassurance is absurd enough that Law wants to laugh, but the weight of the moment compresses his trachea, robs him of even the simplest utterance.

It takes him a long time to start, but eventually the words claw their way out. “I failed,” breathe in, breathe out, one word after another, “at Dressrosa. Everything I set out to achieve, I fucked it all up. It’s only because of you that I survived at all.”

It still hurts, saying it. The scar of that failure runs through his soul like a fissure, deep enough that he suspects it will never fully fade: will never let him look back at his actions without humiliation and rending regret, without digging his nails into his palms.

Without recalling, with vicarious clarity, how badly he’d wanted to die.

Luffy makes an encouraging sound, and Law draws a shuddering breath to continue. “I lied to you. Misled and manipulated to get you to help me, nearly got you killed—nearly got your crew killed,” masochistic addition, knowing that’s Luffy’s sore spot, “and I would’ve done it all over again, without hesitation, if there was even the slightest chance that it might allow my plan to succeed.” Around them the shadows deepen with the sunken sun, and it feels as though they’re growing with his words, the murk of his past seeping through the cracks into his present. The painful knot in his throat refuses to recede. “There was so little of me left, after all that. I couldn’t stay.”

Luffy—doesn’t say anything. Sensing there’s more to be said, or appalled by Law’s words, Law can’t know without looking.

He doesn’t.

_Coward_.

A void yawns between them, and Law, desperate to fill it, keeps talking. “I spent over a decade planning his death, before I met you. Staked everything on that one attempt, and when we got there I couldn’t even stand against him in battle. You did it all,” and he doesn’t mean for this last to come out so _bitter,_ so accusing, but it does, old anger coating the words like an oil spill, “and the marines took him alive. And when I was done trying to kill myself, after,” _and had failed even at that,_ “I was still there, and so, somewhere out there, was he.”

He appreciates, distantly, Luffy’s genius. With their hands clasped Law will know the exact moment that he’s said too much, pushed too far, because that’s when Luffy will let him go.

He resists the urge to grip Luffy’s hand tighter.

Luffy understands. “It wasn’t over.”

Law nearly snarls—not at Luffy, never Luffy, just with the force his own remembered conviction. “Not until I’d crushed the life out of his heart with my own hands. Not until he was cold and dead and dismembered and leagues under the sea.”

The flash of aggression leaves him as quickly as it had come, washing out like a riptide. It’s a reflex, a holdover from the years in which he’d clung to the rage because the alternative was to drown in his fear. The wake of it leaves him tired and cold, and feeling terribly small.

He still can’t meet Luffy’s eyes.

Drops his gaze instead to where their hands are knit together on the bench, still daunted—anchored—by that point of contact, and says, far more softly: “I fought for you, at Raftel. But I chose my enemy for me.”

“Mingo,” says Luffy.

Law nods. “When he came for you with the fleet from Mariejois.” This much Luffy already knows; could hardly have missed it, when Law’s last-minute arrival had saved so much of his allied flotilla.

So Law takes a breath, and tells him the rest, preparing for Luffy to let him go. “I put a seastone bullet in his brain. Tore his heart out with my hands, severed his head before the officers of his fleet, and sank his chained body to the bottom of the ocean.” The grisly details are etched vividly into his memory, half showmanship—an act, an effective one, to cow the Red Line’s dragons—half a lifetime’s rage condensed into a single act of fury, cruelly spent at last.

He’d wondered, before that moment came to pass, whether he would enjoy it. Whether there’d be some sadistic kick of euphoria, a blood-red rush of victory, gleeful vindication. Instead there’d been only the linear progression of time, as there always had been: one instant to the next, Joker there to Joker dead, Law’s worst demon vanquished, and.

He hadn’t done any of it for Cora’s sake.

Luffy’s hand tightens on his own, drawing him back to the present. “Good,” Luffy says, firmly, and Law does look up at him, then, startled. Sees Luffy’s eyes filled with a grim satisfaction—there’s no trace of a smile in Luffy’s features, but it’s clear that he approves, wholly, wholeheartedly, all of him entirely on Law’s side. The affirmation there takes Law’s breath away. “You’re free.”

That Luffy doesn’t think him a monster for what he’s done is enough to make Law sway with relief. He manages, “As free as I can be,” thinking of Joker’s lessons, Joker’s scars—too much of him riding along in Law’s head, maybe, to ever truly die while Law himself remains living. Parasitic immortality, more persistent still than the kind he’d had in mind—but Law shakes the thought, and says the part he most needs to say, buoyed at last by Luffy’s unwavering loyalty. “I’m sorry I ran, after Zou. I’m sorry I broke our alliance, and your trust. But I couldn’t have done otherwise. Not then.”

“I know,” Luffy says, and unknits their fingers so that he can press Law’s hand between both of his own.

It’s a terribly tender gesture, one that puts Law’s heart suddenly in his throat and evaporates his foul memories, overwhelms him. For a moment he’s struck into motionless silence, bowled over by the realization of his reality; by the unbelievable fact of having, all at once, everything in his wildest dreams.

His voice breaks, fault line fracture. “I _missed you._”

“I know,” repeats Luffy, and leans into Law’s side. His body is warm, and the way Law’s heart overclocks at the touch is nothing at all like the earlier anxious spike in his pulse. “I’m glad you came back.”

“Me, too,” breathes Law, and bends, rashly, to kiss him.

Impulsive. Stupid.

For once, exactly right.

It’s easy—so easy—and he marvels at the instinctive way Luffy meets him in the middle, at how well they fit together after all their time apart, after everything Law’s done to break them. Better, maybe, than they did before, when Law had been contorted by his obsession, his sense of self squeezed into the gaps around his fear. Now—

He kisses Luffy, and doesn’t think about the consequences _at all._

Luffy smiles against his mouth, and when they’re through doing far more interesting things with their tongues than speaking; when Law pulls back to find Luffy’s hands fisted, unexpectedly, in his jacket, and his own buried in Luffy’s hair; Luffy says, “Stay, Torao. For a while.”

It isn’t, really, a question. Law says, “Yes,” anyway.

They stay a long time in the garden, and the deepest shadows run kind.

**Author's Note:**

> Contains (non-graphic) references to past attempted suicide.


End file.
